Did the President take an Oath to keep us safe?
No, Absolutely not. The Oath he took states: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."[61]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_of_office#Federal_Executive_and_Legislative_Branch_Oaths
The crux of the biscuit with privacy since 9-11 is the utter lack of PROPORTIONAL RESPONSE to the tragedy of 9-11. I am presuming that keeping us safe also means helping us avoid death. So the most of our resources should be brought to those areas that cause the most deaths.
From a post on DU, someone has estimated that America has lost perhaps 50 lives to muslim terrorists since 9-11. In the same amount of time, we lost approximately 20 million lives from preventable causes. Heart Disease, diabetes, suicides, accidents, etc. My data can be found in this post:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1017&pid=123706
We created this self-perpetuating state of TOTAL INFORMATION AWARENESS in the hopes of turning that 50 dead to zero? Why instead aren't we working more diligently on where it would do the most people the most good and work on the stuff that caused the 20,000,000 deaths instead? This is a ratio of 400,000 "normal"/preventable deaths to 1 terrorism death.
Fighting the war on Terror, based on the concept of proportional response, should be lower on the national priority list than outlawing Donald Trumps hair, fer chrissakes!
Therefore, it's my conclusion that the primary purpose of the "War on Terror" was to justify a bloated and self perpetuating national security state. Something that history shows is always done on the road to a totalitarian fascist police state.
"It can't happen here" in the present is now "It has happened here"
Restoring our Constitutional Rights would do a hell of a lot more for attainment of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" than a police state ever would!
-90% Jimmy
= new reply since forum marked as read